Relaxing watching world series and grandkids. I'll try to fill in some details. Left home on Sept. 15th heading for my brothers place 40 miles from Lander. We ended up killing 2 bulls side by side on the 19th of October during rifle season. Somewhere along the way, I dropped 15 pounds in body weight. Most days were spent long distance spotting and putting miles on the boots. We had 3 different camps moving with weather, sign, and spotting animals. Only had the one almost opportunity during archery season. Wolves didn't bother us as much as previous year, maybe because they already pushed a lot of the elk out of the areas we had luck in years past. Seemed like every time we located elk they would move out of the area next day. We had followed the snow and returned to our first hunting area closer to home. We had enough time to make a spotting run. Instead of hiking to a ridge we used to spot from, brother decided to drive to a spot further away that we could sit in the comfort of the truck. As soon as we stopped I put the glasses up and spotted a herd 2 miles away on 'our ridge'. This was the first large herd we had spotted in all our hunting and we were sure it would have a herd bull. It didn't take long to spot him. Even at that distance it was clear this was the bull to go after. Now my brother is kicking himself for driving to the further location, we don't have time to make a run on them. If we had gone to our hike to ridge, we could have. While he is moaning about his decision, I tell him to look above the big bull at 4 more I could see with binoculars. When he put the spotting scope on them it was clear all four were good bulls. We knew then where we would be in the morning. We spent the evening planning and then dreaming. I had missed an opportunity at 450 yards a week earlier and had been getting discouraged. I was ready to call it quits. This was going to be the final call. We had made the 2 mile hike to this ridge several time so we knew we could do it in the dark. We decided to come in under them and circle above in the last 1/4 mile. As hoped the wind was in our favor, however it was getting light quicker than anticipated. My concern was getting busted by all the cows. As luck would have it, good or bad, the big bull with all the cows had slipped out. As we slipped over our last ridge brother spotted a good bull at over 500 yards and decided toto take a shot. I was hoping we could get closer and spot more. He took the shot and missed. It didn't appear to be sure of what had happened and just stood there. We decided to drop behind the ridge and make a run to close the distance. We were able to close within 260 yards as they topped out on the ridge they were on. Brother had the largest one in his scope going straight away and decided against the shot. Instead he shot a small 5x5 with horns partially hidden behind only tree on the slope. I had a decent 6x6 in crosshairs and pulled the trigger. 8:00 that morning we had 2 bulls laying within 15 yards of each other 2 miles from the truck. After a Month of hard hunting it had finally come together. By the end of the next day, we had everything packed off the hill and home. We didn't do a good job with photos. His camera didn't have a good battery, and my phone was hard to see the display the snow and bright sun. My boy showed me how to fix that after i made it back to WA for the last 2 days of deer season. Still haven't figured how to post pics here. Can send a pic if someone can help with that. To me it's more about the memories. It does feel good having a freezer full of meat.
